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Faithful followers of this website know that many, many of the news reports we critique are based on tips from readers. These emails are important to me because, frankly, there is no way for us to follow as many media sources as our readers do, combined. This is especially true now that our team, due to finances, is smaller than it was for the previous decade or so. From time to time, readers will react to something as simple as a horrible headline or a single rage-inducing phrase in a news report. There’s no way that I can respond to all of these, but here is a recent case that I think deserves a mention. Read the top of this CNN piece (“The Justice Department’s uphill battle against Texas’ abortion ban“) and try to spot the issue that ticked off a reader: In its lawsuit&...

Whether in the lower, middle, or upper school, we all associate the cooler, shorter days with the return of many good things. Fall feels scholastic as the leaves begin to litter the campus and the boys toss footballs on the field. In the classroom, we return to memorizing poetry for the Bard Competition at the Festival Days. We memorize poetry for all kinds of great reasons, which we’ve defended in the past. This article seeks rather to celebrate and share the great poems of Fall that we’ve committed to memory and performed. I asked our entire Faculty to share the autumnal poems they love, focusing particularly on those poems they have either memorized themselves or that they encourage the boys to memorize. In the list below, I’ll add a few thoughts the faculty passed along or that I notic...

Veteran Rome journalist Joan Lewis said Sunday that security concerns stemmed from demonstrations going on in the streets of Rome Saturday. ROME — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her husband left Mass at a church in Rome Saturday due to a “security incident,” the church’s rector said. “You probably heard or saw the commotion. Unfortunately, I guess, there was a security incident and sadly Speaker Pelosi and her husband had to leave,” Father Steven Petroff, rector of St. Patrick’s Church in Rome, said in a video posted on social media. “She was going to do our second reading today, but of course her safety is most important,” he said. Veteran Rome journalist Joan Lewis told CNA Sunday that she had spoken to Father Petroff, who told her that the security concerns stemmed from rest...

October might be the best month to visit Rome. The summer heat has broken, and the weather is perfect. The colors are starting to change. And the food — mushrooms, truffles, pumpkin, and broccoletti are in season, and wonderful. U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Rome this month, and no doubt enjoyed some of those things. But the visit was also politically convenient for the congresswoman, and signaled how strained the triangulated relationship has become between the Holy See, pro-choice U.S. Catholic politicians, and the diocesan bishops charged with the care of their souls. Share The speaker’s visit also foreshadowed how tense the next few weeks will be among ecclesiastical leaders, ahead of the U.S. bishops’ conference debate on a “Eucharistic coherence” document at their November ...

Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World is an unusual podcast. Dealing with the fantastical, it is both wildly popular and, refreshingly, solidly Catholic.  Unlike other successful and more conventional Catholic podcasts, such as Father Mike Schmitz’s The Bible in a Year, Mysterious World deals with theology and what might loosely be described as “the paranormal.” It’s as if Art Bell — the late, legendary host of the all-night Coast-to-Coast AM, which treated similar subject matter — were broadcasting today on a Catholic media network.  Who is behind Mysterious World? And what is their inspiration?  Mysterious World is the brainchild of its co-presenters: Jimmy Akin and Domenico Bettinelli.  “There are many good and successful podcasts that have a single, presenting voice,” says ...